REVIEW

Carto Encourages Players to Look at the World in New Ways

There are many things we can’t control, but changing our attitudes and decisions can have profound implications

If this year has taught me anything, it’s that we can’t control what happens in life. We can often, however, influence outcomes by carefully rearranging the landscape of our attitudes and decisions. Doing so, we find paths, make connections, and build relationships.

Carto is a game that explores these ideas through a map-making metaphor. You play as Carto, a girl struggling to reunite with her grandmother after a terrible storm sends you tumbling out of the family airship to the world below.

Finding Paths

Early on in the game, you’ll spend your time collecting lost pieces of the magic map that controls the layout of the world.

As you collect pieces, you can flip into a map view and begin to place tiles, moving and rotating them to assemble the world. Before long, you begin encountering the game’s many quirky characters and finding opportunities to help…